Young or Old?

Photo by KİRİK SÜLEYMAN from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/hands-against-soil-18574051/

They say age is just a number. But I don’t know if I believe that anymore.

Last week, I talked to a 22-year-old college graduate who didn’t believe I’m in my 30’s. She seemed to think I was messing with her, so she asked to see my driver’s license as proof (I’m not kidding).

I’m usually flattered when people indicate that I could pass for someone in his twenties (“especially if I shave,” I often say). But her response when she saw my birthdate on my license was amusing and thought-provoking: “You’re old!”

Last week, I also had multiple encounters with middle-aged and older folks who indicated that my youthfulness—despite being in my 30’s—was an advantage. “Oh, you’re young,” they said, not realizing that I often feel old because of my semifrequent visits to the chiropractor and my inability to understand why younger adults and teenagers are using such weird slang.

So it’s a comparison game, as many things these days are. To today’s youth, I’m an Adult with a capital “A”. To today’s middle-aged folks, I’m still a “young person,” even though I thought that demographic category would end with my 20’s era.

It also seems like the definition of age dictates the way people act around each other. Therefore, I often feel like I’m struggling to find my place between “young” and “old,” as defined by cultural norms I can’t control.

Story of my life, honestly. And probably the story of a lot of other Millennials. Especially ones who have not reached milestones they thought they would arrive at by now because the world has hammered our generation hard and blamed us for a bunch of things that were never entirely our fault.

I’m even in a unique position for someone of my age.

I’m unmarried and have no kids, which is weird for someone like me, especially in the Church. But I have a house and a full-time job, and I’m actively serving as a leader in multiple ministries of my church and denomination.

I’m currently taking ministry classes as I pursue ordination, but I don’t feel like a college kid.

I’m losing interest in having certain types of material possessions as I pursue a more minimalist lifestyle. Such a mindset feels like something an older person would pursue, but I’m also having a lot of difficulty prying myself away from the Shiny Object Syndrome that partly defined my younger years.

I’m tech-savvy enough to mostly understand new technologies, but not to master them. And there is a resistance in me toward learning and using AI that reminds me of how some people my parents’ age reacted to the advent of the internet, personal computer, and iPhone.

Furthermore, I’m politically neutral/third-way in a polarized, hypocrisy-filled arena that’s designed to exhaust and outrage us into insanity, an arena that often demographically categorizes people according to their age. I often find myself not fully agreeing politically with older people or younger people.

Perhaps I’m experiencing some form of identity crisis. Or maybe I’ve been in one for years that still hasn’t ended.

It’s easy for me to say that my identity is in Christ, as it should be. But when I examine my real-world, real-time thoughts, I often find the standards of the world around me exerting their influence, trying to convince me to conform to something or fit into some specific category.

I’m trying to “find a place” in the world and realizing that being a bit of an oddball—even a socially accepted one—is a bigger challenge to mentally and emotionally manage than I thought it would be. I have skills and interests that benefit me and those around me, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling like I don’t fit in anywhere neatly. Anyway, many of those skills and interests are the surface level of who I am, results of my curious and energetic personality.

People talk about the joy of bucking trends and being different. They talk about being mature for their young age or being youthful in their old age. They talk about standing apart from the crowd and not going with the flow. In fact, being your own person in Western culture is in vogue!

…as long as you become your own person in a way that’s expected, or as long as you’re vocal enough about how different you are to gain social media adoration and pseudo-love from strangers for being “authentic.”

People don’t talk about the loneliness and misfit-ism that often come with not neatly fitting societal expectations and stereotypes.

So am I old, or am I young? Am I left, or am I right? Am I a responsible adult, or am I playacting as one while still feeling like an anxious child?

Or is it possible I’m somehow none and/or all these things?

I’d love to say it’s a cool experience to be called old by young people and young by old people. But to be honest, more than anything else, it’s confusing. And I don’t want confusion. I want clarity, which I’m not going to find within my own flighty, deceptive heart or within other people’s ideas of who I am.

If clarity is what I really want—along with being able to shrug off comparison traps and just be me—I’m going to have fight for it.

Lord help me!